The Pull of the Pennines

The BBC has produced a four-part series celebrating the 268-mile Pennine Way to mark the National Trail’s 50th anniversary. We spoke to the programme’s presenter Paul Rose about what the show entailed, and how it compared to his other global adventures

ven as a child, Paul Rose, presenter of the BBC’s ‘I remember peeling potatoes into a bucket at the Merthyr Tydfil forthcoming television tribute to the Pennine Way, youth hostel in the rain, feeling the sense that I’m alive,’ he recalls. knew he wanted to be a global adventurer. He was ‘I’ve often looked back at that and wondered if I’ve ever felt so E fascinated by explorers such as and, alive. I knew it was all about the outside for me after that.’ coveting the outdoors experience, he’d regularly drag his mattress onto the balcony of his Romford council flat to sleep outside. Back at school he managed to pass metalwork, which meant he could leave to become an apprentice at Ford in Dagenham. ‘It was the claustrophobic urban sense that propelled me into He loved the job, and it enabled him to spend his spare time the wild places,’ says the 63-year-old, who’s had two stints as Vice enrolled on courses at two diving clubs – ‘That was the making President of the Royal Geographical Society. ‘I just knew I had to of me,’ he says. escape from the urban area.’ With an appetite for new experiences, he emigrated to America He was 14 when he had his first experience of proper adventure. in the 1970s to work as a toolmaker at an outboard motor It came while he was on a school trip to the Brecon Beacons. company in Waukegan, just north of Chicago. While over there he He’d always struggled academically (‘I was hopeless in school became a qualified , teaching the Chicago Police and the teachers became the enemy,’ he says), but on that trip Department’s recovery team before becoming Director of the US he excelled at navigating, loved it in fact, especially after being Navy’s programme for the whole of the Great Lakes praised by his geography teacher. area, instructing Navy Seals among others.

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• Paul meets photographer Simon Warner at the Top Withens ruins, said to be the inspiration for Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. • He goes to Malham Show and judges a few competitions, then goes climbing at Malham Cove with world famous climber Steve McClure. ‘I remember peeling • In the Long Churn Cave system Paul compares walking above ground potatoes into a with exploring below it. • In Thwaite Paul tells the story of bucket at the Merthyr the Kearton brothers, pioneering wildlife photographers who inspired . Tydfil youth hostel in • He ends the stage at Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub, a refuge for the rain, feeling the Pennine Way walkers.

Images © Dreasmtime.com sense that I’m alive’

He also gained mountaineering qualifications before taking on mountaineering work in the local area, as well as in Ecuador Episode 1 and Alaska, before returning to the UK in 1988, his CV bursting ‘That’s when we realised how massive it was,’ he says. ‘You’ve only got so much time down there and we were at the end of the dive anyway.’ Episode 3 EDALE TO CALDERDALE with qualifications. His newfound expertise eventually got TEESDALE TO CROSS FELL him a job as Base Commander at the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera research station. In the darkness they carried on in the same direction before seeing a light • Paul sets off from Edale in Derbyshire above. They came up. All they had found was a cavity, another dead end. • At Bowes Museum in Barnard and meets Pennine Way veteran and Castle (a slight detour) Paul finds ‘I originally applied for a diving officer’s job in Antarctica,’ So they went down again and spent ‘a long time’, slowly and methodically author Damian Hall, who tells him what out how artists like Turner used to Paul explains, ‘But when they realised the amount of searching for a way out. to expect. come to paint the Pennines during mountaineering experience that I had – they had some big • Next he tells the story of Tom the Napoleonic wars as they were projects that required mountaineers – they took me on as a ‘By sheer luck we popped out with probably only a minute of air left,’ Paul admits. Stephenson, who had a 30-year battle safe. with government and landowners to Field Assistant, which I worked as for three years. Then I was Surprisingly, it was while working in the dangerous and isolated environs of the • Paul tries kayaking down the River launch the Pennine Way. offered the Base Commander role.’ Antarctic that Paul’s interest in the slightly more benign Pennine Way began. Tees with world champion kayaker • Paul visits the wreck of a US Clare O’Hara, who’s from Leeds. He’s had a lot of ‘bumps and scrapes’ on trips over the decades, ‘I was Base Commander for 10 years and one of my jobs was recruiting new Superfortress bomber which crashed in • A geologist tells Paul about the but he says the most dangerous situation he ever faced was while personnel. The Pennine Way would always come up,’ he laughs. ‘I swear, 90 the Peak District in 1948 killing all 13 rocks of the North Pennines and working in Antarctica. percent of the people sat in front of me looking for jobs as pilots or mountaineers airmen on board. how they support the wildlife. ‘I was making a dive to recover some lost equipment and a very big or divers or scientists had walked the Pennine Way. It was amazing. So it was • Near Holme Moss he meets people who • At Middleton in Teesdale Paul iceberg broke off. The brought it over my position, but I didn’t in the back of my mind that this iconic adventure in England was something are reseeding the moors in an attempt to learns about a threatened upland know,’ he says, ‘So when I came up, instead of coming up to the everyone had done, except for me.’ undo centuries of industrial pollution. wildflower meadow, one of the surface, at about 20 metres I banged my head.’ • While passing Hebden Bridge Paul rarest habitats in the UK. Fortuitously the BBC approached him with the idea of presenting a four-part meets author and actor Barry Rutter who • He heads up High Cup Nick, a He assumed that the iceberg had only drifted over his position by series about the 268-mile walking trail, which runs all the way from Derbyshire tells him about the landscape’s literary spectacular geological feature. connections. a few metres, so he and a colleague followed their line for several to Scotland, to celebrate the Pennine Way’s 50th anniversary. As soon as they minutes before coming to the buoy at the other end of the line – asked, he agreed, cancelling some prior commitments. The experience of making the buoy was also being held under the water by the iceberg. the show didn’t let him down.

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• At Vindolanda Paul joins one of the longest running excavations and finds part of a Roman tablet on camera. • At Hadrian’s Wall he meets Kathryn Tickell, a Northumbrian pipes player whose mum grew up on the Pennine Way. • Paul finds out about attempts to keep the northern stretch of the Pennine Way as a refuge for red squirrels. • On exercise with the army at Otterburn, Paul finds out what’s happening when the red flags fly. • Finally he crosses the border into Scotland.

‘It was in the back of my mind that this iconic adventure in England was something everyone had done, except for me’

‘Completely the opposite,’ he says. ‘It exceeded all my expectations.’ Paul says that one of the highlights was when he joined an excavation team at the site of a former Roman fort at Vindolanda, Over the past year he’s made trips to remote islands in French just south of Hadrian’s Wall. He grabbed a shovel and started Polynesia, the Arctic and Mozambique, yet he still found the digging carefully, listening to the instructions, when suddenly he adventure of the Pennine Way invigorating, though we’ll let you in found a piece of debris in the ground. They took it out and scraped on a secret: despite filming having now finished, Paul still hasn’t it off. It was part of a tablet. actually completed the whole of the Pennine Way. ‘These tablets are like you and I writing Post-it notes today,’ he ‘The original plan was to walk the whole way and tell the story, but it’s logistically impossible,’ he says. ‘We knew what would happen. explains. ‘They tell not only the official story, which is all covered Inevitably we’d end up with people who were essential for me to in official documentation, but we learn so much from soldiers and meet, experts on art for instance, or geologists or scientists, you shopkeepers and livestock managers.’ name it, and the chances of them all being in the right place at the same time and getting the weather right was pretty impossible. At the time of writing he’s still waiting to find out what was written on the piece of tablet he found, but Paul says it was another ‘So what I did was walk the very best bits. The Pennine Way is 268 reminder that sometimes the best adventures and most interesting miles, and I think I walked a lot further than that, because to get to stories are a lot closer to home than you think. some of the places we had to go backwards or take different directions, so it’s fair to say I’ve easily walked the total distance, and possibly ‘I’ve been spending my whole life travelling to these remote places,’ more. I’ve certainly walked all the best bits. But later this year I am he laughs, ‘So it really was a beautiful moment to realise that this going to walk the whole Pennine Way. I’m very keen to do it.’ absolutely, genuinely world-class adventure was only 30 miles During filming he would leave his house in Windermere and drive from my front door.’ east to take on daily challenges along the route, such as walking up High Cup Nick, climbing up Malham Cove with expert climber Steve McClure, kayaking down the Tees and talking to experts, as The Pennine Way begins on BBC One on 9th April and will run well as meeting people who know the history of the walking trail. for four weeks.

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